The housing market, in the Region of Valencia and in all of Spain, continues showing signs of recovery. In the region, according to the latest transaction statistics from the Ministry of Promotion, the total number of operations situated around 11,659 in the first trimester of 2014, which means an increase of around 31% regarding the same time in 2013.

SALES TREND IN Q1 from 2010 to 2014

The Ministry, however, advises that the strong increase detected when comparing the first three months of 2014 with those of the year before is influenced by atypical circumstances that affected the transactions at the end of 2012 and the start of 2013. It coincides with the end of the tax relief for the purchase of homes and a rise of the IVA, which led a large number of buyers to speed up their operations (there were 17,860 of them from October to December in the Community), and it notably reduced those recorded at the beginning of the financial year (8,911 from January to March).

But the facts from the Community are not just positive when we compare them with the first three months of last year. In fact, to find a trimester with more transactions than the first trimester of this year, we have to go back to 2010, when 13,705 homes were sold in the autonomous community. In 2011 there were 10,547; and in 2012, 10,055.

On the other hand, according to the last Property Rights Transfer Statistics from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), which was also published yesterday, housing sales in the Community continued to grow in the month of April, by 3.7%, regarding the same month in 2013.

The trimester development at the national level is even better. The results from the statistics on housing transactions show that in the first trimester of 2014, 81,358 homes were sold in all of Spain, a fact that represents a rise of 48.4% when looking at the first trimester of 2013-effects of the IVA and the end of the tax relief included-. To measure the development without the impact of these “atypical factors,” Fomento recommends looking at the last twelve months, when housing transactions done before a notary rose by a total of 327,091 between April 2013 and March 2014, which means an increase of 8.8%.

However, observing the behavior of the last twelve months, we noticed that housing sales only grew in three communities. This took place in the Canary Islands, Madrid, and Catalonia, with annual increases of 13.9%, 4.2%, and 1.7%, respectively. In Ceuta and Melilla, the increase was 2.4%, while the rest of the territories recorded drops, of which the Valencia region was the second lowest.

The most moderate falls were in the Balearic Islands, the Community, and Andalusia, with 1.2%, 2.9%, and 6.2%, respectively. Extremadura, Asturias, and Castilla-La Mancha, with set-backs of 27.2%, 25.4%, and 21.9%, were the communities with the most massive drops.

Regarding the nationality of buyers, transactions done by foreign residents in Spain experienced a year-to-year increase of 52.6% regarding the first trimester of 2013, an upward swing that is repeated for the eleventh consecutive trimester. In total, there were 12,787 sales, 15.7% of the total, which means a “historic record,” according to Fomento.

Looking at the results by province, we see Alicante as the standout, which recorded 3,191 sales, around 25%, which means that one of every four sales that foreign residents in Spain do in Spain takes place in the south of the Community. The rest of the provinces that stood out were Malaga, with 1,853 operations; Barcelona, with 1,150; Tenerife, with 1,021; and Madrid, with 784. Source: Las Provincias newspaper

About Daniel Talavera

Spanish Property Finder working exclusively with buyers and investors in Spain